NN41, December 2008
The New Politics of Partnership: Peril or Promise?
Research Partnership: Charity, Brokerage, Technology Transfer or Learning Alliance?
By Birgit Habermann, Commission for Development Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna
Email: Birgit.Habermann@oeaw.ac.atKeywords
Research partnership, cooperation, power, agency
Summary
Research partnership has turned into both a panacea and a paradigm defining cooperation between Northern and Southern researchers in the last two decades. But due to its ambiguous connotations and the nature of the aid industry it has become a hotly debated term amongst donors and researchers alike.
Partnership has been used as a political and strategic term to re-define cooperation over the last few decades, however it is ?in danger of remaining a ?feel good? panacea for governance without obtaining a pragmatic grasp of the ?why? and a clearer understanding of the ?how? of partnerships? (Brinkerhoff 2002:2). During many recent conferences, legitimate questions have been raised about the term itself: What is meant by partnership? Who are the partners? What are their roles? Who decides for whom and to what purpose a partnership is established? The level of frustration among Southern partners is high. However, Northern partners increasingly complain about partnership as well, as they start seeing it as something that is imposed on them by funding agencies. This inevitably leads to the establishment of ?fake? partnerships that exist more or less only on paper.
According to Maselli et al (2006: 13), research partnerships ?comprise a combination of result-oriented research activities and capacity-building components at individual and institutional levels, or both levels simultaneously?, and they bring together individuals, institutions or groups of researchers from developing, transitional and industrialised countries (Maselli et al 2006). However, the authors also admit that most partnerships are designed in the North, even though especially the ?agenda-setting process, when research projects or programmes are being designed?, is crucial for the implementation of such partnerships (Maselli et al 2006: 13).
Research partnerships between scientists in Northern and Southern countries too often involve a blending of roles of different actors with different agendas, and are shaped by the asymmetries between them. It is not only the asymmetry in financial resources, and infrastructure, it is increasingly an issue of power and agency that separates the partners to be. Brinkerhoff (2002) also points out that the intrinsic power relations in international development make it impossible to exclude power from partnership (Lister 2000 in Brinkerhoff 2002:177); hence the resistance against ?partnership rhetoric? (Brinkerhoff 2002:177).
Partnership in itself is a sensitive term, as it implies something personal, something that ought to have a connotation of sharing and trust. It is about a shared goal that partners are trying to achieve together. Yet, not having a shared goal is common, and leads to conflict and misunderstandings from the outset of such projects. There are many different reasons to engage in research partnerships. Northern partners are under pressure to involve partners in the South to get funding and research permits to do research in and with Southern countries. Southern researchers hope to benefit from the prestige, access to power and resources as well as networks that such partnerships promise to yield. Due to the high transaction costs and the enormous bureaucracy involved, this high demand for cooperation has indeed become a burden for Southern research institutions.
What makes so many institutions in the North so keen on cooperating with Southern partners? Why is there such an increase in interest in funding research cooperation on a global level? There seems to be more competition than ever between Northern actors for partnership with the South. There is, of course, the obvious argument that globalisation has led to closer integration and more connectedness on a global level (Brinkerhoff 2002). Moreover, I would argue that from a donor?s viewpoint, this may also be an attempt to export Northern technologies and explore new markets, especially to transition economies, but increasingly also to the developing world. In other cases this may still be fuelled by an interest to access resources (e.g. mining, (bio)fuel production, carbon trading, and many others). Yet there are also other, more personal reasons for scientific cooperation between the North and South: some researchers simply like travelling and learning more about different socio-ecological environments.
In many European countries donors are currently re-thinking their approaches to research funding in cooperation with so-called developing countries. Austria is one of the few countries with a specific funding mechanism for research partnerships: the Commission for Development Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (KEF) has been funding research partnerships since 1981. The board is constituted of Austrian scientists, representatives of different interest groups and NGOs as well as ministries. KEF has undergone major reforms since 2003/2004 and has developed its own list of criteria and indicators for funding research partnerships. KEF?s funding strategy has moved towards a more genuine partnership approach; however there are still many issues and major obstacles to overcome, that require more in-depth analysis.
A notion of charity: ?Partnership is a European euphemism for charity? (participant at the Science with Africa conference, Addis Ababa, March 2008):
If a funding agency such as KEF requires Northern scientists to apply for funding together with Southern partners, but provides funding almost exclusively to Southern partners, then this partnership risks being perceived as an act of charity by both partners. Southern partners feel like the ?beneficiaries? of such cooperation. The benefits in terms of revenue for the Northern institutes become marginal. Hence, many scientists work in their spare time for such projects, and with little recognition from their own institutions. The allocation of funding by the donor agency to both partners is therefore a crucial determinant of the way partnership is perceived by the researchers.
A notion of brokerage: ?Money rules....? or ?Deliver the work first, then I?ll pay.? (Austrian project manager in a ?partnership project?)
Admittedly, a broker can assume a variety of roles. However, in research partnerships this role often has to do with money. It often happens that Northern researchers access the funds, and act as project managers, but don?t actually do any research. In the same way as many other funding agencies, KEF transfers the funds to the Austrian partners only. This is partly due to legal reasons, partly due to the fact that some Southern partner institutions are too small to administer the funds. An argument brought forth by Southern researchers is that many Southern institutions have started charging large overhead costs, leaving their own researchers with little money for actually doing research. Nevertheless, money is power ? since however many benefits a broker may have, too often the power that comes with this role is used as a lever against partners when they don?t perform as expected or agreed upon. A funding agency therefore needs to carefully look at its strategy in this respect.
A notion of technology transfer: ?We give them our science, we put it in their heads and there it stays forever? (Austrian scientist at a conference in 2008)
If partnership is connected to training and capacity development activities, then there is a risk that the Northern partners will perceive themselves as teachers rather than learners, and that this perception of ?superiority? will persist well into further follow-up research cooperations. If partnership is based on a previous supervisor-student relationship, then it is bound to fail in many cases. When a researcher gets involved in a project with a former supervisor, the topics, methods, the whole notion of science, the validation of what is scientifically sound and what is not, will most likely be framed by the supervisor?s epistemological basis and assumptions. In such cases, technologies developed in one part of the world are still imposed on a different part of the world. Even if adapted to local conditions, under such circumstances the project and the partnership are very likely to fail. Hence, a donor needs to make a clear structural distinction between capacity development and research cooperation. Power relations and asymmetries on an individual level may otherwise ruin any promising research partnership.
A notion of learning: ?You people come here and ask so many questions. Then you leave and nothing changes.? (Farmer in NWFP, Pakistan, 1998)
What is the point of research partnerships when there is only one partner with an interest in learning something from the project? If there is no alliance of scientists and local stakeholders both in the North and the South with a genuine interest in learning, then the whole effort is likely to be in vain. If the research project is not rooted in a local context, what will happen with the results? So many projects have failed because they failed to address what people needed and wanted. These are the reasons why KEF as a Northern funding agent would want to support research partnerships rather than just projects. However, the actual understanding of partnership, what it implies, and what roles partners can or should assume, needs to be analysed much more carefully. Partnership in a learning alliance needs to extend beyond the usual set of actors; it will have to reach out to the societies affected by its activities both in the North and the South, and it will have to apply methods that require skills beyond the usual training of scientists. That is why KEF asks partners to explain very clearly in their funding proposals why they start a research partnership, what it means to them, who the partners are, how they will involve other stakeholders, and who will benefit from this in what way.
As a funding agency, KEF is aware of the asymmetries, the often unclear objectives and ?hidden? agendas, and the unequal power distribution within the projects. However, the only way to ensure some sort of accountability to the poor and marginalised is to ?impose? the rule of partnership. Southern partners are in some way expected to represent the ?voice of the South?, and even though this may not always be a legitimate assumption it seems a lot wiser than allocating this role to Northern research institutions.
References
Bossuyt, J., and G. Laporte (1994) Partnership in the 1990s. How to Make it Work Better, Policy Management Brief No. 3. Maastricht: ECDPM.
Brinkerhoff, J.M. (2002) Partnership for International Development. Rhetoric or Results? Boulder, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Habermann, B. (2006) Joint Research, Joint Learning. Research Partnerships for Development. Commission for Development Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, VOEAW, Vienna, 180 pp
Lister, S. (2000) Power in partnership? An analysis of an NGO?s relationships with its partners. Journal of International Development 12:2, pp. 227-239.
Maselli D, Lys J-A, Schmid J. 2006: Improving Impacts of Research Partnerships. Swiss Commission for Research Partnerships with Developing Countries, KFPE. GEOGRAPHICA BERNENSIA, Berne, 96 pp.
Vincent, R. and Byrne, Ailish (2004) Learning in Partnerships. Briefing paper based on a workshop hosted jointly by BOND and Exchange in 2003. BOND and Exchange. Online.
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